YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A CHINESE CENTRAL BANKER with a vault full of greenbacks to feel queasy about the soaring U.S. deficit and the consequent risks of inflation. Worry warts are breaking out all over. They are sounding the alarm in stock letters, at press conferences, and within the marbled halls of the Federal Reserve itself. In fact, recent speeches by Charles Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, are so similar that there appears to be an orchestrated attack on the inflation policies of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke.

"It sounds like they are telling Bernanke that we have to start worrying about inflation right now," says economist...